Republicans have pushed a nearly 1.5 trillion dollar (£1.11 trillion) tax bill through the Senate, taking a giant step toward giving President Donald Trump one of his top priorities by Christmas.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the legislation would prove to be “just what the country needs to get growing again”.
Mr Trump hailed the bill’s passage on Twitter, thanking Mr McConnell and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Andrew Harnik/AP)
“Look forward to signing a final bill before Christmas!” the president wrote.
Presiding over the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence announced the 51-49 vote to applause from Republicans.
Sen Bob Corker was the only lawmaker to cross party lines, joining the Democrats in opposition.
The measure focuses its tax reductions on businesses and higher-earning individuals, gives more modest breaks to others and offers the boldest rewrite of the nation’s tax system since 1986.
Republicans touted the package as one that would benefit people of all incomes and ignite the economy. Even an official projection of a one trillion dollar, 10-year flood of deeper budget deficits could not dissuade GOP senators from rallying behind the bill.
“Obviously I’m kind of a dinosaur on the fiscal issues,” said Mr Corker, who battled to keep the bill from worsening the government’s accumulated 20 trillion dollars (£2.22 trillion) in IOUs.
The Republican-led House approved a similar bill last month in what has been a swift trip through Congress for complex legislation that impacts the breadth of American society. The two chambers will now try crafting a final compromise to send to Mr Trump.
After spending the year’s first nine months futilely trying to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law, GOP leaders were determined to move the measure rapidly before opposition Democrats and lobbying groups could scupper it. The party views passage as crucial to retaining its House and Senate majorities in next year’s elections.
Democrats derided the bill as a GOP gift to wealthy and business backers at the expense of lower-earning people. They contrasted the bill’s permanent reduction in corporate income tax rates from 35% to 20% to smaller individual tax breaks that would end in 2026.
Congress’s non partisan Joint Committee on Taxation has said the bill’s reductions for many families would be modest and said by 2027, families earning under 75,000 dollars (£55,000) would on average face higher, not lower, taxes.
The bill is “removed from the reality of what the American people need,” said Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
He criticised Republicans for releasing a revised, 479-page bill shortly before the final vote, saying: “The Senate is descending to a new low of chicanery.”
Asked why the Senate was approving a bill some senators had not read, Senator Ron Johnson told reporters: “You really don’t read this kind of legislation.”
The bill would abolish the “Obamacare” requirement that most people buy health coverage or face tax penalties.
Industry experts say that would weaken the law by easing pressure on healthier people to buy coverage, and the non partisan Congressional Budget Office has said the move would push premiums higher and leave 13 million additional people uninsured.
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